Privacy & Cookie Policy
How the AMBER Lab at the University of Haifa collects, uses and protects information on this site — and how we use cookies.
Last updated: 3 September 2026
Who we are
This site is operated by the AMBER Lab (Applied Marine Biology and Ecological Research), headed by Prof. Dror L. Angel, Department of Maritime Civilizations and the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, University of Haifa, 199 Abba Hushi Blvd, Mt. Carmel, Haifa 3498838, Israel. We own this site and are the controller of the processing described here.
This is an academic information site. We do not sell personal data, we do not trade in it, and we run no targeted advertising or marketing profiling.
What we collect
- Technical server data: IP address, browser and operating system type, requested page, request time and referring page. This is required to secure the site, prevent abuse and diagnose faults.
- Aggregate usage statistics: Page-view counts, languages, device types and referral sources — in aggregate, with no attempt to identify an individual visitor.
- Information you choose to send: If you email or phone us, we retain the correspondence and your contact details in order to reply and to keep scientific and administrative records. The site itself has no form that collects personal data.
- Local preferences: Language choice, accessibility widget settings and your cookie decision are stored in your own browser and are not transmitted to us.
Jellyfish sightings reported to Meduzot Ba'am are collected in that project's app and website, not here, and are governed by that project's own privacy policy.
Why we use it
- To operate, secure and keep the site stable.
- To understand which scientific content is needed and improve how we make research public.
- To answer enquiries, advance research collaborations and document outreach activity.
- To meet academic reporting obligations and legal requirements.
Legal bases for processing: our legitimate interest in running a secure research website and communicating science; your consent — for non-essential cookies; and legal obligations where relevant.
Third-party services
The site is hosted and delivered through infrastructure and content-delivery providers that process technical requests on our behalf. Embedded content is loaded from Google Maps and YouTube (privacy-enhanced mode) only after you allow that category. Those services may collect data under their own privacy policies, which we do not control.
Links to external sites (publishers, research projects, media outlets) open in a new tab and are governed by those sites' policies.
Retention and security
Server logs are kept for the short period needed for security and diagnostics. Aggregate statistics are kept without personal identifiers. Correspondence is kept as long as it is needed for research or administrative purposes. We apply reasonable security measures, though no transmission over the internet is completely secure.
Your rights
Under Israel's Protection of Privacy Law 5741-1981 and its regulations, and under the GDPR where it applies, you may access the information we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, object to processing, and withdraw consent to cookies. We respond within a reasonable time and may need to verify your identity.
The site is not intended to collect information from children. In school outreach activities, photographs are published only with the approval of the responsible authorities.
Automated collection and AI
We welcome search engines and AI assistants indexing this site in order to refer readers to the source. Bulk scraping, harvesting of email addresses, adding lab members to mailing lists and automated outreach are not permitted, as set out in the Terms of Use.
Changes and contact
This policy may be updated; the revision date appears at the top of this page. For privacy questions: dangel@univ.haifa.ac.il · Contact page